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Union attacks Amazon 'regime' for treating staff as 'robots'

Amazon is facing renewed claims of poor working conditions, just one day after CEO Jeff Bezos defended his company against accusations of fostering a deliberately toxic corporate culture.

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The UK GMB trade union accused Amazon of treating staff at its UK distribution centres as "above average Amazon robots", saying that the "regime" under which they work is leading to physical and mental illness.

Elly Baker, lead GMB officer for Amazon, told the Times that workers have reported constant anxiety and stress fostered on purpose to push efficiency to the limit. "It's hard, physical work but the constant stress of being monitored and never being able to drop below a certain level of performance is harsh. You can't be a normal person. You have to be an above-average Amazon robot all the time," she told the Times, whose report is currently behind its website's paid firewall.

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She added that the union was "seeing this specifically because of the regimes they work under".

The claims are separate to those made by the New York Times over the weekend, which focused on corporate working conditions at Amazon's Seattle HQ, and how they have led ex-staffers to regard the company as unusually brutal even in the traditionally intense world of tech culture.

The New York Times' expose relied on interviews with more than 100 former or current Amazon employees, and included the allegation that a worker with breast cancer was put on a "performance improvement plan" to raise her standards or else face losing her job.

In response to the article, Bezos sent staffers and the media a strongly-worded statement refuting the claims and saying it did not reflect the company he knew. "I strongly believe that anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay. I know I would leave such a company," Bezos wrote.

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The Times article instead looks at the 7,000 staff that work at Amazon's distribution centres in England, Wales and Scotland, and is not the first time that workers have spoken out about how they are treated.

WIRED has contacted Amazon for comment and will update this article accordingly.